1637 – The Polish Maelstrom – Snippet 51

“We’ll wait until it has passed over the city and is
clearly heading to the southeast,” said General Franz von Mercy, watching
the aircraft that was flying over Krakow at an altitude he guessed to be
perhaps half a mile. That was a very rough guess, as you’d expect coming from a
man who’d had little experience with the American flying machines. He’d never
been up in one himself, and hoped he never would. Von Mercy wasn’t exactly
afraid of heights, but they did make him queasy.

“That will distract the garrison and have them looking
the other way when we begin the charge. We’ll start the charge when the
airplane has gone a mile or so beyond the city limits. Give the signal then,
Captain.”

His adjutant, Captain Reitz Aechler, pursed his lips.
Belatedly, von Mercy realized he’d given the order to a man who had no
experience at all with aircraft. He’d never seen one until the day before
yesterday. His ability to gauge distances would be tentative.

So was von Mercy’s, but he probably had a better chance of
getting it right. “Give it another
minute,” he elaborated. “These machines move very quickly.”

Aechler nodded and turned in his saddle. “Ready for my
command!” he shouted to the small group of trumpeters sitting on their
horses some twenty yards away. Unlike von Mercy and Aechler himself, the
trumpeters were still within the line of trees. Von Mercy hadn’t wanted any
more men than necessary to come out into the open until they began the charge.
That meant him and one adjutant. He figured that even if an unusually keen-eyed
and alert sentry on the walls of Krakow spotted them at this distance–it was
at least half a mile–he wouldn’t call an alarm. At most, he might call them to
the attention of his sergeant. But that delay would be all they needed. Once
the charge started they’d be spotted quickly.

Von Mercy could easily see the royal castle on Wawel Hill,
as well as the Basilica of St. Mary. However, what his attention was
concentrated on was the tower in the center of the city that rose up from the
town hall. Adjacent to that town hall was the Cloth Hall, which sat in the
middle of Krakow’s famous Rynek
Główny, the main square which was one of the largest in Europe.

That was their destination, once they got through the gate
and into the city. The Main Square was at the very center of Krakow, not just
in terms of crude geography but because well-built streets went out from it to
every part of the city. If all went as planned, the garrison would be dispersed
and still further disorganized, which would allow von Mercy to strike anywhere.

****

Jeff didn’t wait until Eddie’s plane was past the city
walls. As soon as the Steady Girl crossed the city’s walls on the northwest side, he gave the order.

“Tell the forward battery to start firing.”

The order was passed by radio immediately. Mike Stearns had
been known to complain about the slowness with which down-time officers adopted
radio techniques instead of the tried and true method of sending couriers to
transmit orders. But that was not a problem in the Hangman Regiment. The
Hangman’s radio chief before he got killed in the Bavarian campaign had been
Jimmy Andersen, one of Jeff’s close friends. Between his instruction and his
example, the Hangmen had been quick to adapt to radio.

Within seconds, the six mortars stationed forward began
firing. And, once again, Colonel Higgins had the unpleasant experience captured
in the old dictum no battle plan survives
contact with the enemy.

To add a bitter irony, in this instance the problem wasn’t
caused by the enemy but his own mortar crews.

The jerks were too
accurate, right out of the gate! The very first salvo landed directly on
the barbican of the gate they were aiming at. That was just blind luck. But
then, to compound the problem, the mortar crews–who were in direct line of sight
and could see how accurate their fire had been–kept it up. No doubt
congratulating each other on their extraordinary skill.

Jeff waved over one of his remaining radio operators. He’d
send orders–stiff ones–telling the mortar crews to start moving their fire
away from the barbican, toward the center of the city. How were the cavalry
supposed to seize the gate if their own damn army was shelling them?

Then, to his astonishment, the medieval construction started
coming apart under the bombardment. How in hell was that happening? The bombs the mortars were throwing were just not
that powerful; they were designed as anti-personnel weapons, not
bunker-busters.

But coming down they were. Watching, Jeff realized what must
be happening. Krakow’s walls were quite impressive to the eye–two miles long,
with no fewer than thirty-nine towers and eight gates. The main gate was known
as the Brama Floriańska, but that was quite a distance from the gate where Jeff
intended to breach the walls.

However imposing they might appear to be, however, the walls
had been erected in the thirteenth century. That was before cannons started
being used in this part of Europe. Cannons were first developed in China in the
twelfth century and spread westward over the course of the next hundred years,
transmitted by the Arabs. Their first use in Europe was in the Iberian
Peninsula. No one knew exactly when they started coming into use in Eastern
Europe.

But whenever it was, the walls of Krakow had never been
designed to withstand cannon fire. Even so, they should have held up under
mortar fire. But Jeff had picked this gate precisely because it was not used as
often as most others. What he hadn’t considered was that as the decades and
then the centuries passed, it received only occasional maintenance–which was
usually improvised and makeshift, to boot. The barbican had probably never been
rebuilt, simply braced and shored up whenever it became too dilapidated. But
the best that could be said for it was that it was ramshackle. If two or more
bombs hit simultaneously on the same structure, that could set up shock waves
that could rip or jolt the structure enough to start what amounted to a masonry
avalanche.

However it had happened, the fact was that it had. Under the
impact of the high explosive bombs, the barbican was coming apart and pulling
down the adjacent walls with it. But “coming apart” didn’t mean the
stones they were made of disintegrated. No, as the barbican and walls collapsed
the stones just started piling up.

An incongruous thought passed through Jeff’s mind as he
watched his plan of battle collapse like the walls of Krakow.

O, that this too too
solid flesh would melt

Thaw and resolve
itself into a dew!

He wished stones would do the same. Fat chance of that
happening. The barbican came down completely, crushing the gates. How do you
charge and open gates when the blasted things no longer exist? All there was
now in that part of the walls was a pile of rubble.

On the bright side, part of the rubble fell into the moat
that surrounded the city. That moat, which had been constructed at the same
time as the walls, was still a formidable obstacle in places. But elsewhere it
had suffered the inevitable decline that the fortifications of a city that had
rarely been attacked were prone to. Originally–and it still was in places–the
moat had been more than fifty feet wide and twenty to twenty-five feet deep.

We’re about to get to see how good von Mercy is in this book. If he’s already ordered the charge to start, he needs to call it off NOW. If he hasn’t started moving, he needs to never start moving. Hopefully either he or his aide is not so distracted by the plane that they won’t notice that someone just converted their gate into a pile of rubble that no horse can hope to cross.

Alternately, he could quickly change his orders, ride forward, dismount, leave a quarter of his men as horse holders, and try to take the square dismounted. Do we know what KIND of cavalry he’s got. Dragoons would be ideal for that but are unlikely, but almost all cavalry had some training in fighting as infantry.

On the good side, they now have a practical breach, and can call on the garrison to surrender or evacuate the city.